Hearing Cori Copp's audioblog on Jim Behrle's blog and noticing Sandra Simonds' remark about dysfunctionality in blogland I got into an inner debate with some ideas that came to me about whatever I sensed they were getting at or implying in their comments about blogging. I remembered that people constantly got tired or annoyed on the Buffalo poetics list, particularly women, and would write letters to the list that they were tired of the fighting and arguing or of being completely ignored. I always found this disturbing and wondered why it kept happening. I realize that women have strong reasons for developing a highly sensitized bullshit detector. It's an absolutely necessary defense mechanism against a lot of shenanigans by men some of which are aimed their way. But what I'm thinking right now about writing and the arts in general is: if someone, even better a group of someones don't get bit carried away or outrageous nothing much happens! I don't mean necessarily getting overexcited, or crazy, but at least a bit more intense than everyday levels of becoming absorbed or engaged in ideas, discussion, expression, interaction, exchange. Surely most bloggers try to do this in some way. What kind of theater can happen if people don't get a little surprised, aroused, upset, dazzled, confused or provoked? Any given twenty minutes of television will convince you that most of life should consist of discussions of some sort of mildy provocative rehash of events reported in the news . My favorite Blake aphorisms are: "Enough! Or Too much." The other is: "If the fool were to persist in his folly he would become wise."